Elasticity recovery of crosslinked EPDM: influence of the chemistry and nanofillers

The objective of this work was to study the elastic recovery of EPDM samples crosslinked either by a phenolic resin (resol) or by a radical peroxide (dicumyl peroxide, DCP). From compression set experiments, it was observed that radically crosslinked EPDMs have better elastic recovery properties. On the other hand, for the same crosslinking density, radically crosslinked EPDM shows better compression set than EPDM crosslinked with phenolic resins. The Chasset-Thirion equation was then used to successfully fit the experimental relaxation curves. As a notable result, the preferential statistics of a peroxide-crosslinked network over a phenolic resin (resol) showed that better elastic recovery properties were obtained. Finally, the influence of fillers (carbon black and silica) was also studied. Carbon black with DCP crosslinking was shown to improve elasticity recovery whereas silica fillers lead to worse properties. It was then assumed that the interaction between particle surface and a voir comme dans autre publi à modifier ce crosslinking agent induced crosslinking gradients in the inter-particle volume.